Fire Department Command Center Upgraded To Improve Response
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A multimillion-dollar upgrade to the fire department’s command center, which during the World Trade Center attacks had to rely almost entirely on radio technology, is expected to drastically improve the city’s response to fires and attacks.
Instead of radios, the new emergency headquarters, located at the department’s main office in Brooklyn, has flatscreen televisions that carry live images from police helicopters and photos of buildings or city infrastructure.
The $17 million upgrade was one of a number of recommendations made by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which was hired by the city to evaluate the response to the September 11, 2001, attacks.
“To the best of our knowledge, the FDNY’s new operations center is the most advance firefighting facility of its kind,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.
The city’s fire commissioner, Nicholas Scoppetta, said the facility has the technology to bring in “huge amounts of data” during any incident.
He also said the facility, which officially opened this summer, gives senior fire officials a place to receive real-time information and to manage incidents at headquarters, where they can better analyze information.
“You have any major incident in the city, an explosion, any kind of event, it can be run from this center because of the technology that is here,” he said.
The commissioner said most of the McKinsey Report recommendations have been implemented, but technology is still being developed to track firefighters in high-rise buildings through electronic chips in their gear.
The center – which has 75 flat-screen computers and 24-hours crews — was paid for with $3 million of city money and $14 million from the Department of Homeland Security.
It is designed to improve communication between the FDNY, the police department, the Office of Emergency Management, and other city agencies. Breakdowns in communications between police and fire officials have been cited as one of the most serious problems in the trade center response.
The center will also hook into a $500 million wireless network set to be in use in 2008 for emergency responders. Officials will have live feeds from traffic cameras in the near future.
